PRC official asks another to resign

SANTA FE Election-season rancor was on full display Tuesday, as one public regulation commissioner said another should resign for spreading falsehoods about the agency.

Commissioner Ben Hall, speaking at the end of a public meeting, accused fellow Commissioner Jason Marks of torpedoing the organization he has served on for nearly eight years.

"I might not say he lies, but he uses falsehoods," Hall said. Hall, R-Ruidoso, was upset with Marks for describing PRC operations as "dysfunctional" during an interview on radio station KOB. Marks favors three state constitutional amendments that would streamline or change the PRC. Hall opposes all the proposed amendments, saying they will not help the citizenry.

Voters will decide the issues in next week's election, but Hall blamed Marks for making the agency look bad in his public comments.

"We don't need your negative attitude," Hall said. "If you don't like the PRC as it is, I suggest you resign."

Hall said no reply was warranted, because he had not asked any questions of Marks. In a subsequent interview, Marks said he was proud of his service record at the PRC and and he believes the constitutional amendments would improve the agency's performance. He also said he had no animus toward Hall.

"It's not personal," Marks said. "But there is a lot of putting lipstick on the pig around here.

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For instance, Marks said, the PRC's corporations division once was incompetent. Filings that should have been routine matters were lost, delayed or fouled up, he said.

Marks said the elected commissioners would intervene in these cases, creating a system where a few wrongs were righted by elected officials. The commissioners, like patr-ns in old-style politics, then would be thanked by customers for fixing a system that never should have been broken, Marks said.

But big-picture issues, such as utility rate cases, received less attention while the elementary bureaucratic snags were attended to, Marks said.

Marks said he poured much of his energy into utility cases involving hundreds of thousands of people. In 2011, he engineered a compromise that reduced a rate increase by Public Service Company of New Mexico by nearly 3 percentage points. The savings to ratepayers was $13 million. Hall and Lyons voted against Marks' plan, which subsequently was accepted by the utility company.

Finding legal and fair solutions in utility, telecommunications and public-safety cases is the main job at a PRC that is overburdened with other work, Marks said.

One of the proposed constitutional amendments would move the corporations division to the secretary of state's staff. Another would split off the insurance division as a separate entity.

The third would empower the state Legislature to increase qualifications for those who want to run for the PRC. Currently, the only qualifications to be a $90,000-a-year regulatory commissioner are that candidates be at least 18 years old and have no felony record.

Marks said he worked behind the scenes with Think New Mexico, a public policy organization, to craft the three proposed amendments. He said he kept his involvement quiet because he did not want reforms of the PRC to be seen as partisan.

Hall criticized Marks for expressing an interest in running for state attorney general while serving on the PRC.

Marks will leave the PRC in December, the end of his second term. He said he would announce in January whether he will run for attorney general in 2014.

One reason he has delayed a decision is an ethical stand, he said.

"I don't feel comfortable asking people for (campaign) money while I'm a public regulation commissioner," Marks said.Milan Simonich, Santa Fe bureau chief of Texas-New Mexico Newspapers can be reached at msimonich@tnmnp.com or 505-820-6898. His blog is at nmcapitolreport.com